Category: Newspaper Archive

The news broke a few days ago that two long time PI’s for the Church of Scientology are suing the group after the church reneged on their lifetime commitment of employment. C’mon guys, these former L.A. cops are mere wogs. Their lifetimes are surely a drop in the bucket compared to the billion year commitment you get from all your Sea Org staff.

Attorneys for Paul Marrick and Greg Arnold said the church owes their clients for unpaid work, including casing the neighborhood of Ingleside on the Bay resident Mark “Marty” Rathbun, a former high-ranking church official.
Karin Pouw, a spokeswoman for the church based in California, said she had no comment because church attorneys had not had a chance to review the most recent lawsuit filing, received by the court clerk Thursday. It was filed in basic form, with few details, in July.
Rathbun defected from the church in 2004 and settled in the small bayside community where he began counseling other defectors, writing a blog criticizing the church, and fostering a movement of Scientologists who adhere to the philosophies of church founder L. Ron Hubbard but reject the practices of the organized church and its leadership.
For Ray Jeffrey, one of the attorneys for Marrick and Arnold, this is not his first brush with the church. He represented Debbie Cook, another former high-ranking church official who sent ripples through Scientology circles in a New Year’s Eve email to thousands of Scientologists criticizing aggressive fundraising practices and calling for changes.
The church sued her in San Antonio, where she lives. Jeffrey helped negotiate a settlement in which Cook gave up no money but agreed never to speak out against the church. Yet the settlement came only after a day of embarrassing court testimony from Cook, reported by the Tampa Bay Times, in which she detailed how church workers essentially were imprisoned and beaten.Jeffrey said Marrick, 52, of Colorado, and Arnold, 53, of California, approached him because of his work on the Cook case and the difficulty explaining the complexities of the inner workings of the church.
“If you go try to tell a lawyer about this who has no knowledge of it, it could take them months just to get the lay of the land,” Jeffrey said.
He is working with three other attorneys, including Tom Harrison, of Corpus Christi.

Joe Childs and Tom Tobin of the Tampa Bay Times reported on the lawsuit and have now done a lengthy interview with Marrick and Arnold who were hired in 1988 to spy on Pat Broeker, the man L. Ron Hubbard apparently chose as his successor to run Scientology. Marrick and Arnold spent nearly the next 25 years following Broeker everywhere he went.

Church officials painted Broeker as an errand boy for the late Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. They said he had made off with $1.8 million and a cache of critically important Hubbard records.
Follow Broeker, they said. Watch him every minute. Report back frequently.
The private eyes did. Beginning in 1988 and continuing for a quarter of a century, Paul Marrick and Greg Arnold tracked Broeker from a California apartment to a cowboy town in Wyoming and even to the Czech Republic.
They spied on his girlfriends, rifled through his garbage and listened to his phone calls.
After 14 months, high-ranking church leader Marty Rathbun told Marrick and Arnold they had performed so well, the church would have work for them for the rest of their careers.
They were “part of the family,” Rathbun told them.
The church started paying them a lump sum: $32,000 a month.
“We thought, ‘Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal,’ ” said Marrick.
And the checks kept coming until this summer, when the church stopped paying.
Now, Marrick and Arnold are suing Scientology, claiming the church and its leader David Miscavige violated their long-ago verbal deal.
In a three-hour interview with the Tampa Bay Times in the office of their Texas lawyer, Ray Jeffrey, the investigators shared details of their top-secret work. They told a rollicking tale of espionage and described the expense to which Scientology went to gather intelligence on real and perceived enemies.
The investigators’ lawyer says the church paid them between $10 million and $12 million. In addition to Broeker, they followed several other church targets, including a drug company executive who now is governor of Indiana — Mitch Daniels.

In addition to the print story, segments of Tobin and Childs’ video interview have been posted on the Tampa Bay Times website. In the video, the men explain that code names were used for all the parties involved. David Miscavige was named the Duke, which seemed to please him mightily.

This looks to be a case that will quickly settle but the cat is now out of the bag. After 25 years of following Broeker, the PI’s concluded he was a nice guy with nothing to hide and a far cry from how the Duke had him portrayed. 25 years of hounding a man because the Duke was worried about his throne.
If only someone could come up with a science of the mind that could help the poor, little Duke.

You couldn’t meet a nicer person than Susan Elliott who posts as “I’m Glib” at various forums and regularly protests at Scientology Orgs around Southern California. The Orange County Weekly has an article about how those protests have led to attacks against her by the Church of Scientology which (of course) portrays her as a dangerous individual, acting in cahoots with a terrorist organization.

Laguna Beach resident Susan Elliott said she’s among those whose efforts to combat alleged abuses in the Church of Scientology have been met with spy tactics and harassment at her doorstep.
“I’ve been followed a million times,” said Elliott, 56, who is a computer programmer by trade but was wary to state where her business is located, out of fear that Scientologists would conduct operations there.
Elliott confirmed that she was spied on by Paulien Lombard, a former Scientologist featured in a recent OC Weekly cover story. In fact, she first confirmed the spying in a comment posted on in the online version of the story, where readers may recall how Lombard described sitting outside of Elliott’s home for hours.
Lombard later apologized to Elliott.
“We invited her in and had tea, and sat in the living room and talked for an hour or so, and I was just amazed that she would do that — that she would come to us,” Elliott said.

UPDATED with Scientologist’s reactions below.
The St. Petersberg Times continues their terrific series of articles on Scientology fraud and abuse. This time they focused on how Scientology coerced Sea Org members to have abortions in an article called No Kids Allowed.

Laura Dieckman was just 12 when her parents let her leave home to work full time for Scientology’s religious order, the Sea Organization. At 16, she married a co-worker. At 17, she was pregnant.
She was excited to start a family, but she said Sea Org supervisors pressured her to have an abortion. She was back at work the following day.
Claire Headley joined at 16, married at 17 and was pregnant at 19. She said Sea Org supervisors threatened strenuous physical work and repeated interrogations if she didn’t end her pregnancy. She, too, was back at work the next day.
Two years later she had a second abortion, this time while working for the church in Clearwater.
A St. Petersburg Times investigation found their experiences were not unique. More than a dozen women said the culture in the Sea Org pushed them or women they knew to have abortions, in many cases, abortions they did not want.
Some said colleagues and supervisors pressured them to abort their pregnancies and remain productive workers without the distraction of raising children. Terminating a pregnancy and staying on the job affirmed one’s commitment to the all-important work of saving the planet.

Twenty years ago, when Natalie Hagemo was 19, pregnant and working for the Church of Scientology, she couldn’t wait to be a mother.
She was near the end of her first tri­mester, she says, when colleagues in Scientology’s military-style religious order, the Sea Organization, began pressuring her to get an abortion.
Two high-ranking officers said terminating the pregnancy would allow her to keep working. They berated her when she said no.
Supervisors told her to hide her expanding belly lest co-workers start thinking it was acceptable to get pregnant. Friends and colleagues shunned her.
Hagemo stood fast and, with her husband at her side, delivered Shelby on Aug. 20, 1990.
Hagemo left the Sea Org but remained an active parishioner and raised her daughter as a Scientologist.

Once again you try to paint an ugly picture of a religious movement that has helped hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of people lead happy and successful lives. So let me address your latest falsehoods.
My experience in Scientology has been incredible.
I have been a member of the Church of Scientology since 1973. I met and married my husband while working for the church. I have raised two sons in the church. They are both practicing Scientologists. They have never taken drugs or abused alcohol. They are ethical and productive members of society. My husband and I have been married 32 years. We are both productive members of society. We both do extensive volunteer work in Clearwater.
THERE IS NO CHURCH POLICY CONCERNING ABORTION. I put that in all caps because I’m not sure that it will come across accurately if I don’t. What’s true about the Church of Scientology is not what any member or former member says. Even what I say is not the truth about the Church of Scientology. What is true is what L. Ron Hubbard wrote or said.
I know countless Scientologists who have children. I know hundreds — if not thousands — of staff members who have children. I know members of the Sea Organization who have raised children within that group.
Therefore your Sunday headline — No kids allowed — is a lie, pure and simple. But it is no less than what I expect from your newspaper.
I thank goodness that there are people in this society who do help others and who take responsibility for their own lives. The people you interviewed obviously don’t do either.

What Joanie leaves out of her bio is that she was the personal assistant of one the ten top Scientology officials who went to prison for Operation Snow White at the time of the espionage scandal. I captured her on tape decades later with Clearwater politicians at the opening of a refurbished alleyway next to Scientology’s property.
[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8576290912419011832#[/googlevideo]
And she can be seen hectoring Stacy Brooks about Bob Minton outside a City Council meeting in 2000.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCU62bm61Wo[/youtube]

August 14, 1998
OP/ED
Letter to the editor from Scientologist, Frank Offman‘True enemies’?
To the Editor:
The article of July 31 (“Antagonism leads to shotgun blasts”), mentions how Robert Minton of Sandown apparently shot at peaceful Church of Scientology parishioners without rational reasons -he claims he has been emotionally damaged by his brutal involuntarily incarceration into a psychiatric institution at the age of 16.
What led to Minton’s involuntary commitment is not commonly known, but the residual hostility within him is very evident.
The goal of Scientology is a world without war, crime and insanity where the able can prosper and honest beings have rights. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard first released “Dianetics” The Modern Science of Mental Health” in 1950, followed by millions of Scientologists reporting miraculous successes from their application of Scientology methods to real life situations. Scientology is an applied religious philosophy that enables one to gain a greater understanding of their own spiritual nature.
In 1951 Hubbard’s bestselling book, Science of Survival, exposed CIA-funded psychiatric mind-control experimentation, which used electroshock, drugs and hypnosis to program innocent people to become robotic assasins. Later these incidents were recounted in well-known publications and movies such as the Manchurian Candidate and Conspiracy Theory.
Minton stated on several occasions the irreparable damage psychiatry has had on his youth and his overall depression in life. Perhaps this is a similar story to that of the recent Capitol Hill gunman, Russell Eugene Weston Jr., who also had a long history of emotional problems before his frenzied shooting.
Who can tell what really set Minton off to fire a shotgun at peaceful Church parishioners who were merely asserting their freedom of speech? Did he just take on the colors of the psychiatric enemies he was trying to fight? It was fortunate that the skilled police officers of Sandown arrived early enough on the scene to handcuff Mr. Minton and protect him against himself and others,
For several decades, the Church of Scientology has worked shoulder to shoulder with government and private agencies to expose and eradicate illegalities in the field of psychiatry, including fraudulent involuntary commitment. Many of these activities were followed by shutdowns of these asylums.
The Church of Scientology remains dedicated to eradicating psychiatric abuses such as occurred in Minton’s case and hopefully Robert Minton one day will come to realize who his true enemies were.
FRANK OFFMAN
Public Affairs Director
Church of Scientology

Local man helps many leave Scientology
Church says he distorts truth
by Lara Bricker, Staff Writer
July 31, 1998
Sandown – Just who is 51 year-old Robert Minton, and why has he spent almost $2 million dollars helping people he feels have been victimized by the Church of Scientology?
If you ask him, the Boston resident who owns a summer home on Fremont road in Sandown will tell you it’s because he doesn’t believe in Xenu, an evil galactic overlord who controlled nine planets in this section of the galaxy 75 million years ago and then decided to do a little population control by wiping out 7 billion people.
It is something Minton contends Scientologists are taught. And it’s an expensive lesson, he says, costing as much as $360,000 to get to the top levels of the church.
According to Minton, Scientologists are taught that Xenu injected all the “bad” people with glycerol and alcohol, froze them and then sent them in rocket ships to Teegeak (the Scientologists’ name for Earth) where they were deposited in volcanoes on the Canary Islands and Hawaii.
Minton feels the methods used by the church brainwash people and, after extended exposure to these techniques, the critical thinking capabilities of their brains are shut down.
“By the time they learn about Xenu, it wouldn’t matter if the story was a thousand times more bizarre.” Minton says. “You’re not able to think, to make critical decisions. It’s really chilling what these people do.”
After learning of what he calls an illegal attempt by the church to remove a Web site containing information taken allegedly from their sacred scriptures, he began to study the church.
“What could be said about somebody that’s so bad that they try to stop free speech,” Minton said was his initial thought.
Kevin Hall, human rights officer for the church’s Boston location, said the reason the church was upset about the information on the Web site was it had been altered and was untrue.
After the untimely death of church member Lisa McPherson in 1996, Minton said he became more concerned about what was going on in the church. He said McPherson was locked up for 17 days in a Scientology headquarters in Clearwater, Fla., when she was in need of medical aid.
“I thought this was pretty appalling,” Minton says. “We got together and said we’re not going to let this get swept under the carpet.”
Minton felt moved to pay the attorney fees in a wrongful death suit McPherson’s parents filed against the church. Since then, he has assisted others he feels have been victims of the church.
He bought a house for Stacy Young and her husband who ran a shelter for cats, which was shut down, Minton said they feel, as retribution for their leaving the church.
Minton is currently preparing to assist another church deserter who, Minton said, plans to come forward with information about what goes on within the confines of Scientology. One of those former church members who doesn’t want his identity or whereabouts revealed, has information that apparently upset the church, Minton said.
When contacted by phone, the former church member described Minton as an angel come to help him.
Hall said Wednesday, Scientologists question the methods used by psychiatrists, especially the involuntarily commitment of individuals to institutions.
“When they do it involuntarily, it’s pretty un-American and un-constitutional,” Hall said. “Drugging is merely masking problems and leads to addiction. Mental instability is usually something physical.” Hall added, “that’s what we’re fighting.”
A retired investment banker, Minton has returned to Sandown for the past eight summers and, until last weekend, church protesters have not targeted his rural home, although they have picketed his Boston residence.
The Church of Scientology is skeptical of Minton’s motives, and a spokesperson said he wants to know why the Sandown summer resident is on a crusade to reform the church and why he is “spreading lies.” “He’s trying to destroy the church,” said Hall.
Minton says the mind-control techniques the church uses could account for why people haven’t come forward until now. He says the church instill fear in members.
“you can become outside your body, can control matter, energy and space,” he said church members are told. “If I don’t like you, I can with my eyes kill you.”
Hall says Minton fails to recognize the good work the church has done.
“When he spreads things, he certainly doesn’t talk about literacy programs, criminal rehabilitation programs in inner cities around the country,” Hall says. “He’s not a nice guy.”
Although the estimated number of Scientologists in New Hampshire doesn’t even make a dent in the estimated 8 million members worldwide, Hall says they are around. He says there is a small mission in Concord and estimates about 500 members live in New Hampshire. Due to the size of the New Hampshire mission, Scientologists have had to leave the state to reach the highest levels of the church, he said.
Two of the protesters who picketed outside Minton’s Sandown home last weekend live in Newfields.
Part of the allure of Scientology, Minton said, is the fact that several well-known actors who have joined the church: Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Lisa Marie Presley, to name a few. He said the celebrity names make people think if people like that are involved it must be legitimate.
Hall says the philosophy of the church centers on helping people and improving their ability to deal with and live their lives. As for the skeptics, he says, they should not listen to Minton’s claims.
“The church has a long track record of improving life. Millions of people attest to it,” Hall said. “What people should do is look at the material on Scientology and think for yourself; learn to understand life, think for yourself.”

Sandown Police: Shots Fired in Spat With Protesters
By Hope Ullman – Union Leader Correspondent
July 28, 1998
SANDOWN — A longtime opponent of the “Church” of Scientology allegedly fired two shots into the air Saturday after telling “Church” of Scientology members — who had been picketing outside his summer home on Fremont Road — to leave his property.
Robert Minton, a longtime “church” opponent and defender of those he believes have been victimized by the “church,” fired a 12-gauge shotgun into the air after asking four pickets and a private detective hired by the “church” to leave, Police Chief Scott Currier said.
Although Minton has apparently seen his share of Scientologists picketing outside his Boston home, this was the first such incident in Sandown, Currier said. Officer Ben Pinault responded to the scene after hearing the shots.
“He had seen picketers out there earlier in the day, and we are somewhat aware of the conflict between Mr. Minton and the ‘Church’ of Scientology,” Currier said.
The protesters were gone when police from Sandown, Chester, Fremont and Danville and two state troopers arrived. Asked why so many law-enforcement officers responded, Currier said, “We know they’ve had an ongoing feud between them. We didn’t know what we were dealing with, so we prepared for the worst. … We spoke to Mr. Minton and took custody of the firearm for the night just for everyone’s safety.” The incident remains under investigation. Currier said neither side had filed a complaint yesterday, and no charges were expected. However, a man who identified himself as Gerard Renna, one of the Scientologists who protested, said he plans to file a formal complaint against Minton today.
“We did a peaceful demonstration. He shot the gun,” said Renna, who phoned a reporter yesterday. Renna said he’s tired of Minton “going on ‘Dateline’ and spreading lies about the ‘church.’ I’m just a little fed up. He’s been a little un-American.”
Attempts to contact Minton yesterday were not successful.
Minton has organized demonstrations against the “church” before, Renna said, so Scientologists should be allowed to do the same.
“A Scientologist is just one who tries to better his conditions in life” through the teachings of the “church’s” founder, L. Ron Hubbard, Renna said. “I don’t understand why someone would want to attack a fast-growing[sic] religion[sic].” According to Kevin Hall, human-rights[sic] officer for the “Church” of Scientology in Boston, the “church” is “a religious[sic] philosophy that deals with improving[sic] life and helps[sic] individuals develop themselves mentally and spiritually[sic] and use their full potential by increasing the ability to communicate, study better and realize the potential (they) have.”
Hall said he does not understand the basis of Minton’s protests against the “church.”
As for Saturday’s protest, “There were some people very upset about what he’s been pushing in the media,” Hall said. “He’s basically been funding a group of people to attack us through the media and courts….” Hall alleged that after the protesters knocked on Minton’s door to tell him they were protesting, Minton told them to leave; they did, and he then allegedly fired the shots into the air.
According to a July 9 report in the Boston Globe, Minton has endured numerous protests outside his Boston home by Scientologists who have reportedly written and distributed fliers containing attacks against him, in addition to hiring private detectives to investigate his past. Minton reportedly questioned whether Scientologists were responsible in the past for many odd incidents, such as a dead cat he once found on his Sandown doorstep. “Church” officials denied any involvement in that incident.
Minton, a multimillionaire, has devoted much of his post-retirement life and funds to helping those he alleges were victimized by the “church.” Asked why, Minton told the Globe he believes in the First Amendment; he has the money to fight the “church” and its alleged harassment of former members; and he can’t forget being locked up in a mental institution for several days at age 16 against his will.
According to the Globe story, that experience led to his interest in the case of Lisa McPherson, who, Minton and other Scientology detractors allege, died after being locked up for 17 days in a Scientology-owned hotel in Clearwater, Fla. Minton reportedly paid for an attorney for the family of McPherson in a wrongful death suit against the Scientologists. “Church” officials denied responsibility for her death.
“I was never a member of the group, but I’m involved because I believe everyone has the right to believe what they want,” Minton told the Globe.
“People don’t have the right to have their minds controlled and manipulated in the way the Scientologists manipulate people. I’m so incredibly shocked at the pain the Scientologists can cause people. It’s so obvious that Scientology, like other groups and cults, causes a lot of devastation,” he said.
Police Chief Currier said his main concern is for the safety of all residents.
“We don’t know what to expect,” Currier said. “There’s a lot of rumors and innuendoes … so we don’t really know how far this is going to go.” Hall said the “church” is a peaceful organization.
“As far as I’m concerned, if the ‘Church’ of Scientology and Mr. Minton have problems, they should keep it between the two of them and take it to a courtroom, and they shouldn’t be playing high school games and getting the rest of the community involved,” Currier said.
“I would say that both sides are pushing their luck, and are pretty close to crossing the line in terms of breaking the law. The ‘Church’ of Scientology had no business being on his property, and Mr. Minton had no business discharging a firearm into the air.”

Christie King Collbran (center) has had her whole family disconnect from her, even though she is still a firm believer in Hubbard and the tech.
The New York Times has a heartbreaking story of disconnection from a Scientologist I haven’t heard from before. Christie King Collbran believes in Scientology but not in David Miscavige. She and her husband had seen enough of the abuses inside the organization to know something was wrong. When they went on the net , they discovered they weren’t the only ones who felt that way.

Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.
They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.
But after 13 years and growing disillusionment, the Collbrans decided to leave the Sea Org, setting off on a Kafkaesque journey that they said required them to sign false confessions about their personal lives and their work, pay the church thousands of dollars it said they owed for courses and counseling, and accept the consequences as their parents, siblings and friends who are church members cut off all communication with them.
“Why did we work so hard for this organization,” Ms. Collbran said, “and why did it feel so wrong in the end? We just didn’t understand.”
They soon discovered others who felt the same. Searching for Web sites about Scientology that are not sponsored by the church (an activity prohibited when they were in the Sea Org), they discovered that hundreds of other Scientologists were also defecting — including high-ranking executives who had served for decades.
Fifty-six years after its founding by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986, the church is fighting off calls by former members for a Reformation. The defectors say Sea Org members were repeatedly beaten by the church’s chairman, David Miscavige, often during planning meetings; pressured to have abortions; forced to work without sleep on little pay; and held incommunicado if they wanted to leave. The church says the defectors are lying.
The defectors say that the average Scientology member, known in the church as a public, is largely unaware of the abusive environment experienced by staff members. The church works hard to cultivate public members — especially celebrities like Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Nancy Cartwright (the voice of the cartoon scoundrel Bart Simpson) — whose money keeps it running.
But recently even some celebrities have begun to abandon the church, the most prominent of whom is the director and screenwriter Paul Haggis, who won Oscars for “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash.” Mr. Haggis had been a member for 35 years. His resignation letter, leaked to a defectors’ Web site, recounted his indignation as he came to believe that the defectors’ accusations must be true.
“These were not the claims made by ‘outsiders’ looking to dig up dirt against us,” Mr. Haggis wrote. “These accusations were made by top international executives who had devoted most of their lives to the church.”
The church has responded to the bad publicity by denying the accusations and calling attention to a worldwide building campaign that showcases its wealth and industriousness. Last year, it built or renovated opulent Scientology churches, which it calls Ideal Orgs, in Rome; Malmo, Sweden; Dallas; Nashville; and Washington. And at its base here on the Gulf Coast of Florida, it continued buying hotels and office buildings (54 in all) and constructing a 380,000-square-foot mecca that looks like a convention center.
“This is a representation of our success,” said the church’s spokesman, Tommy Davis, showing off the building’s cavernous atrium, still to be clad in Italian marble, at the climax of a daylong tour of the church’s Clearwater empire. “This is a result of our expansion. It’s pinch-yourself material.”
As for the defectors, Mr. Davis called them “apostates” and said that contrary to their claims of having left the church in protest, they were expelled.
“And since they’re removed, the church is expanding like never before,” said Mr. Davis, a second-generation Scientologist whose mother is the actress Anne Archer. “And what we see here is evidence of the fact that we’re definitely better off without them.”
Ms. Collbran, who is 33, said she loved the church so much that she never thought she would leave. Her parents were dedicated church members in Los Angeles, and she attended full-time Scientology schools for several years. When she was 8 or 9, she took the basic communications course, which teaches techniques for persuasive public speaking and improving self-confidence and has served as a major recruiting tool.
By 10, Ms. Collbran had completed the Purification Rundown, a regimen that involves taking vitamins and sitting in a sauna (a fixture inside every Scientology church) for as much as five hours a day, for weeks at a time, to cleanse the body of toxins.
By 16, she was recruited into the Sea Org, so named because it once operated from ships, wearing a Navy-like uniform with epaulets on the shoulders for work. She fully believed in the mission: to “clear the planet” of negative influences by bringing Scientology to its inhabitants. Her mindset then, Ms. Collbran said, was: “This planet needs our help, and people are suffering. And we have the answers.”
Christie and Chris Collbran were married in a simple ceremony at the Scientology center in Manhattan. Although she and her parents were very close, she said they had spent so much to advance up the bridge that they could not afford to attend the wedding.
It was in Johannesburg, where the couple had gone to supervise the building of a new Scientology organization, that Mr. Collbran, who is 29, began to have doubts. He had spent months at church headquarters in Clearwater revising the design for the Johannesburg site to meet Mr. Miscavige’s demands.
Mr. Collbran said he saw an officer hit a subordinate, and soon found that the atmosphere of supervision through intimidation was affecting him. He acknowledges that he pushed a 17-year-old staff member against a wall and yelled at his wife, who was his deputy.
In Johannesburg, officials made the church look busy for publicity photographs by filling it with Sea Org members, the Collbrans said. To make their numbers look good for headquarters, South African parishioners took their maids and gardeners to church.
But the Ideal Orgs are supposed to be self-supporting, and the Johannesburg church was generating only enough to pay each of the Collbrans $17 a week, Mr. Collbran said.
“It was all built on lies,” Mr. Collbran said. “We’re working 16 hours a day trying to save the planet, and the church is shrinking.”

There’s much more at the New York Times website including a video interview with Christie. I’d like to thank the Times for reporting this story and everyone who agreed to be interviewed.UPDATE:
Tony Ortega at the Village Voice blogged about the New York Times piece and had some interesting things to say:

The New York Times has just sent a clear endorsement of a Pulitzer for last year’s blockbuster series by the St. Pete Times.
Here’s hoping the Pulitzer committee is listening.
As someone who has been writing about Hubbard’s nonsense for fifteen years, I’m especially grateful to Goodstein and the Times for taking on a subject I didn’t want to be bothered with: the mistreatment of Sea Org members.
This has been a drumbeat with church critics over the last couple of years — ABC News took it on in a mostly forgettable Nightline piece — and I’ve resisted writing about it for exactly the way it comes off in Goodstein’s piece.
Critics implore journalists to write about poor Sea Org members, who work long hours for almost no pay, are eternally stressed out and underfed, and who are discouraged from having children and encouraged to get abortions.
When my Scientology sources ask me why I don’t seem interested in writing about that part of the Hubbard universe, I try to explain how easy it is for a church supporter to fend off that kind of criticism — which is exactly what happened in Goodstein’s piece.
Life in the Sea Org is brutal? Well listen, moron, you signed a BILLION-YEAR CONTRACT to worship and work for a 1930s pulp science fiction hack who invented a religion that believes space aliens have taken up residence in your body — what the hell were you thinking?

While I have the utmost respect for Tony Ortega and enjoy reading everything he has to say on the subject, no matter what you say of a critical nature to a Scientologist, they are going to shrug it off with the same ease. The blinders are on and the thought-stopping techniques instilled by Scientology training are running at full steam when someone presents “entheta.”
But the message being imparted by Rathbun and Rinder now is having a massive effect on the flock. There are OT’s and staff looking at what is being said by people that were held in high esteem and they are listening to that message far more than they would anything I have to say or Tony Ortega would have to say. That’s one of the reasons Paul Haggis left. That’s one of the reasons this couple in the Time’s piece left…and it will inspire others to stand up and say, “things have got to change.”
It may not be the full message. It may not be the most important message. But it’s a message a particular audience needs to hear and one worthy of being told. And if it’s told often enough, maybe someone will actually do something about the poor staff who are being mistreated. It looks like action may be taken in Australia in the near future and that may well change the course of Scientology and David Miscavige’s future.
Read Tony Ortega’s full blog entry and tell me what you think.

By LESLIE MILLER, Associated PressTuesday, December 09, 1997
BOSTON – A millionaire claims the Church of Scientology intimidates its detractors and prescribed medical techniques that he says killed one member. Church members say the millionaire is using “KKK-style” tactics to discredit the church.
Robert Minton has put $1.25 million into helping those fighting the church. He calls it an exercise of his First Amendment rights.
Members of the Church of Scientology have paid for a private investigator to dig into Minton’s private life and threatened to sue him in six states. They call it chasing a rat out of his hole.
A lawyer who has been involved in such attacks – both against and on behalf of religions – said such disputes can go on for years and become very emotional.
“Sometimes reason seems to evaporate,” said Lee Boothby, a Washington, D.C.-based church state lawyer.
“All of the very new and small religious groups that feel threatened tend to become very aggressive. The problem of it is, where will it end. I don’t know if I see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Scientology, a religion founded on the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, has 700 centers in 65 countries. In 1991, Time Magazine estimated its membership at 50,000 members.
Scientologists have long complained the German government discriminates against them. They compare their treatment to Nazi harassment of Jews in the 1930s.
Boothby doesn’t disagree with the analogy.
“When you get to Eastern and Central Europe, where they’re passing restrictive legislation, the ones who suffer are not just new, new religions. Presbyterians in the Soviet Union have been evicted by property owned by government. Baptists have been prevented from holding public meetings. There, Baptists, Presbyterians and Lutherans are cults.”
Minton’s clash with the Scientologists began a few years ago when he was web surfing at his home in the historic Beacon Hill section of Boston.
While observing the news group, Minton took notice of the case of Dennis Erlich, a former Scientologist who had put copyrighted Scientology material on the Internet.
“They obtained an ex parte writ and invaded his home,” said Minton. “The cops and their lawyers carted away all this man’s computer equipment.”
Minton said he was appalled by the tactics used by Scientologists to violate their own members’ civil rights.
He contributed $5,000 to Erlich’s defense fund.
Earlier this year, he contributed $100,000 to plaintiffs in a wrongful death suit in Clearwater, Florida alleging the church caused the death of 36-year-old Lisa McPherson by holding her against her will and denying her care. Minton said he donated the funds to McPherson’s estate because Scientologists had a formidable defense team; he has also pledged another $250,000 to help finance the suit.
Minton said he’d let the Clearwater police decide if the Scientologists killed McPherson.
“Certainly L. Ron Hubbard’s medical techniques, which he prescribed Scientologists to follow, killed Lisa McPherson,” he said.
Two months ago, Minton bought a $260,000 home near Seattle for two former Scientologists who have testified against the church. The couple claim their landlord evicted them after Scientology officials pressured him to do so.
“Who’s behind this guy?” said Kendrick Moxon, an attorney for the Church of Scientology. “The man is going to be sued because he has committed torts all over the country and I want to know why is he trying to destroy religion and create chaos.”
Kurt Weiland, a Los Angeles-based spokesman for the Scientologists, accused Minton of “covertly funding, and in this way, manipulating litigation.”
Members of the Boston-area branch of the church passed out flyers on Beacon Hill last Friday, denouncing Minton. “This week he is leading a KKK-style rally against peaceful members of a religion,” read the flyer.
The flyer referred to Minton’s attendance at a rally outside a courthouse in Clearwater, Fla., marking the two-year anniversary of McPherson’s death.
Weiland admitted the group’s lawyers had hired at least one private investigator to look into Minton’s private life.
“If it takes five to get to the bottom of it to find out what are the hidden motives of this man, I will gladly endorse our lawyers to hire five.”
Boothby views all that litigation with dismay. “There’s more heat than light,” he said. “It tends to generate more heat on both sides than is useful.”
Copyright 1997, Naples Daily News. All rights reserved.